Digital Economy, Financial Development, and Energy Poverty Based on Mediating Effects and a Spatial Autocorrelation Model

How to effectively solve the problem of energy poverty from the perspective of digital economy is a topic worthy of attention. As a new economic form characterized by information technology, does the digital economy have an important impact on energy poverty? What is the inner mechanism? Based on the theoretical analysis of the internal mechanism of the impact of the digital economy on energy poverty, this paper systematically investigates the impact of the digital economy on energy poverty by establishing a mediation effect model, spatial autocorrelation test, and heterogeneity analysis, taking 30 provinces in China as the research object. The study found that: (1) the digital economy has a significant mitigation effect on energy poverty, there are regional differences, and the mitigation effect is more obvious under a high level of digital economic development; (2) financial development is one of the mechanisms involved in alleviating energy poverty, and only the intermediary effect in the eastern region is significant; (3) energy poverty has a gradually increasing positive spatial correlation and obvious spatial agglomeration characteristics. Finally, this research provides policy implications for fully realizing the potential of the role of the digital economy and financial development, thereby alleviating energy poverty.